Bush: It's Mukasey or Nothing
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, November 2, 2007; 1:02 PM
President Bush yesterday asserted that he would never nominate anyone for attorney general who would be willing to state that waterboarding is torture -- so, if the Senate doesn't approve Michael Mukasey, "that would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war."
There is, of course, no attorney general right now because Bush's last choice spectacularly self-destructed. And many members of Bush's own party are quite comfortable stating that waterboarding is torture. It's not exactly a controversial position, seeing as waterboarding has been an iconic form of torture since the Spanish Inquisition.
But it's not Bush's style to back down, especially when a key element of his radical and unprecedented expansion of executive power is at stake.
Instead, Bush has learned that the higher he ratchets up the rhetoric, especially if he can accuse his critics of being weak on terror, the more likely Congressional Democrats are to fold. He's simply counting on that happening again.more -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/11/02/BL2007110201377.htmlI remember Jeb once said that there was nothing that George liked more than to get someone to knuckle under. He must be celebrating tonight.